Police informer arrested for misleading cops after robbery

Bhayander police arrested informer Ramanand Jadhav for robbing a jeweller of ₹25 lakh in gold, aided by CCTV footage and false leads.

MUMBAI: The Bhayander police on Sunday arrested a police informer for allegedly robbing gold worth ₹25 lakh from a jeweller last month. The informer was aware of the police investigation and tried to mislead them, but a CCTV footage of him at the spot led to his arrest.

Police informer arrested for misleading cops after robbery

The two accused have been identified as Ramanand Jadhav, 40, and his associate Sunil Ninba Patil, 35. The two are part of the ‘bol bachchan gang’ a term used to refer to robbers who engage in conversations with their targets to distract them before stealing.

According to deputy commissioner of police (Bhayander) Prakash Gaikwad, the incident took place last month. Balkrishna Ayud, a jeweller, was on his way to a showroom with a bag which had 370 grams of gold biscuits in it. The two accused stopped him on the road. Jadhav grabbed the bag from him, asking if there were chocolates in it. Before Ayud could react, the two men quickly snatched the bag and fled. Ayud approached the police station and filed a complaint.

The police had communicated to informers about the robbery for tip-offs, Jadhav was one of them. He misdirected the police by saying the accused fled to Gujarat, where they had come from. For many weeks, the police were following his false tip-offs. They got a breakthrough in one of the CCTV footages near the area. “Jadhav was misleading us. But in one of the footages, we found him near the spot wearing the same t-shirt as the complainant had described,” Gaikwad said.

The police detained Jadhav, who confessed to the robbery. After searching Patil’s house, police found gold worth ₹20 lakh. The two men were arrested under section 309 (robbery) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita.